Tuesday, July 8, 2025

In an exclusive conversation with Travel and Tour World, Yesaswini Karumanchi, Senior Product Manager at Airalo, delves into how Airalo Partners is reshaping global business travel through innovative eSIM technology. Airalo for Business provides seamless, secure, and highly cost-effective connectivity across more than 200 destinations, offering a transformative alternative to traditional mobile roaming. Businesses adopting Airalo’s solutions report savings of up to 90% compared to conventional roaming charges, thanks to prepaid local-rate data packages that eliminate hidden fees and unpredictable costs.

A significant advantage lies in Airalo’s centralized platform, enabling enterprises to manage, monitor, and control travel connectivity for their global workforce with ease. This centralized system consolidates expenses into a single invoice, dramatically reducing administrative burdens tied to processing numerous individual expense reports and reimbursements. Additionally, businesses gain granular budget controls, allowing them to set spending limits at various organizational levels—from the entire company to specific branches or individual employees—thus achieving proactive and predictable cost management.

Karumanchi emphasizes security as a core differentiator. Unlike physical SIMs, which are susceptible to theft or damage, Airalo’s digital eSIMs offer enhanced safety. Airalo’s compliance with stringent standards like SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and PCI DSS underscores its commitment to data protection and regulatory adherence, providing reassurance to corporate clients managing sensitive information and financial transactions.

Airalo also streamlines IT processes through SSO and SCIM integrations. These features automate employee onboarding, provisioning, and deactivation, ensuring efficient and secure access management for globally dispersed teams. This automation reduces IT workload, minimizes errors, and guarantees timely access for employees on the move.

Real-time analytics further strengthen Airalo’s value proposition. Companies can analyze eSIM usage, monitor travel patterns, optimize budgets, and even track the environmental impact of digital SIM adoption through a dedicated “Carbon Footprint Reduction” metric. This sustainability feature helps businesses integrate environmental accountability into their broader ESG strategies.

Moreover, Airalo’s flexible eSIM management tools empower decentralized teams to manage local connectivity needs independently while maintaining centralized oversight and budget control. Employees in diverse regions can purchase eSIMs directly via the Airalo app, ensuring rapid access to data without cumbersome approval processes, thereby boosting agility and productivity.

Looking ahead, Airalo plans to introduce subscription-based data services for enterprises, ensuring uninterrupted global connectivity for frequent travelers, and a business-mode credit card feature to streamline expense tracking while leveraging corporate discounts.

Karumanchi underscores that Airalo’s mission is to make global connectivity seamless, scalable, and sustainable, positioning the company as a pioneer in transforming how businesses keep their teams connected worldwide.


How is Airalo Partners transforming international business through eSIM technology?

Airalo Partners is transforming how companies connect their traveling workforce with an easy-to-adopt and cost-saving eSIM solution. 

Airalo for Business, a business eSIM solution, delivers seamless, cost-effective, and secure global connectivity to over 200 destinations, drastically reducing expenses to a fraction of traditional roaming prices. It comes complete with a centralized platform, allowing companies to manage, monitor, and adjust travel connectivity budgets with ease. Companies save significant time and money while ensuring their teams remain productive and connected worldwide. 

What advantages does Airalo offer over traditional mobile roaming plans for corporate travelers?

Massive cost savings (up to~ 90%):

  • Traditional roaming: Involves high, unpredictable per-MB charges, daily fees, and often unexpected bill shock due to out-of-bundle usage. Rates vary wildly by country and carrier.
  • Airalo for Business: Provides prepaid data packages at local rates, significantly cheaper than roaming. Businesses only pay for what they purchase, eliminating hidden fees, subscriptions, and surprise charges. This helps with reporting predictable budgeting and substantial savings.

Simplified management & centralized control:

  • Traditional roaming: Involves managing multiple employee roaming plans, tracking individual usage, and processing numerous expense reports. It’s time-consuming and prone to errors.
  • Airalo for Business: Offers a centralized platform for buying, distributing, managing, and monitoring eSIMs for the entire workforce. Features like centralized billing consolidate all purchases into one invoice, reducing administrative workload and eliminating individual reimbursements. Budget controls allow companies to set spending limits at various levels (e.g., company, branch, employee) for proactive cost management.

Enhanced security & data protection:

  • Traditional roaming: Connections can sometimes be less secure on public Wi-Fi or unfamiliar local networks, especially without proper VPN use. Physical SIM cards can be lost or stolen.
  • Airalo for Business: Digital eSIMs are less susceptible to physical theft or damage. Airalo for Business’s adherence to SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and PCI DSS compliance ensures high data and payment security standards. SSO integration further strengthens access security.

Flexibility & global coverage:

  • Traditional roaming: Limited by the home carrier’s roaming agreements, and may not cover all necessary destinations.
  • Airalo for Business: Offers access to 900+ packages across 200+ countries and regions. Travelers can choose local, regional, or global plans, ensuring optimal coverage and cost-efficiency for any itinerary. This flexibility extends to data-only or data/text/voice bundles and varying validity periods.

Improved employee experience & productivity:

  • Traditional roaming: Employees often face slow speeds, unreliable connections, or the stress of managing their roaming costs, leading to frustration and lost productivity.
  • Airalo for Business: eSIMS provide reliable data, allowing employees to focus on work rather than connectivity issues. The Airalo app’s ease of use means less friction and higher adoption, leading to cost savings through increased usage.

Environmental sustainability:

  • Traditional roaming: Relies on physical SIM cards, contributing to plastic waste and carbon emissions from manufacturing and shipping.
  • Airalo for Business: eSIMs are a 100% digital solution that eliminates physical SIM cards, packaging, and transportation and aligns with corporate sustainability goals.

How important is Airalo’s global coverage of 200+ destinations in supporting multinational corporations?

Airalo’s 200+ destination global coverage is critically important for multinational corporations, providing consistent, cost-predictable, and reliable connectivity worldwide. Global coverage offered by one solution simplifies management, drastically cuts roaming expenses, boosts employee productivity, and enhances organizational agility across diverse global operations.

In what ways does Airalo’s centralized billing and budget control benefit companies managing frequent global travel?

Airalo for Business’s centralized billing and budget controls are pivotal for companies managing frequent global travel, by streamlining financial operations and significantly improving cost control. Instead of managing numerous individual expenses across various carriers, payment methods, and currencies, companies receive one consolidated monthly invoice.

This dramatically reduces administrative burden and eliminates the time spent on individual employee reimbursements. Moreover, it improves financial reporting, ensures compliance through accurate expense tracking and policy enforcement, and frees up finance teams for more strategic tasks by moving them from reactive processing to proactive management.

Airalo for Business provides comprehensive budget and cost control features. Companies can proactively manage their travel connectivity expenses by setting spending limits at various levels – whether it’s for the entire company, specific branches, or even individual employees. This granular control allows for proactive cost management, with spending limits that can be reset weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Companies managing global workforces are able to monitor which employees or branches are spending the most on eSIMs. The visibility in eSIM purchases allows companies to understand purchase patterns and optimize their plans and financial planning accordingly.

How does Airalo’s compliance with GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 Type II enhance business trust and data security?

Airalo’s compliance with GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 Type II demonstrates a strong commitment to protecting sensitive information and significantly enhances business trust. These compliance certifications give partners peace of mind, as they directly impact a company’s reputation, legal standing, and ability to mitigate risk.  

Our SOC 2 Type II certification, achieved through a rigorous third-party audit, proves our dedication to maintaining the highest safety and security practices for partner data. GDPR compliance ensures secure processing of personal data for EU citizens, minimizing privacy risks and potential fines. PCI DSS adherence guarantees that payment card data is processed and stored in a highly secure environment, mitigating financial fraud. These certifications collectively provide ongoing assurance that Airalo’s systems effectively safeguard sensitive business data, building overall reliability and confidence for our partners.

Can you explain how Airalo’s SSO and SCIM integration streamlines employee onboarding and access?

Airalo’s SSO and SCIM integration streamlines employee onboarding and access by automating user management and authentication, saving both time and manual labour. SSO allows employees to use a single set of credentials (from their existing company identity provider, like Okta or Azure AD) to access the Airalo Partner Platform, eliminating the need for separate logins and passwords.

Ease of access facilitated by SSO reduces login fatigue and support requests for forgotten credentials, making the onboarding process faster and more user-friendly. 

SCIM complements SSO by automating the provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts in real time. When a new employee joins, their Airalo account is automatically created, and relevant permissions are assigned based on their role within the company’s identity provider. Conversely, when an employee leaves or changes roles, SCIM automatically deactivates or updates their Airalo access, enhancing security by preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data and ensuring compliance with access policies. 

Automated team management reduces manual IT workload, minimizes human error, and ensures immediate, secure access for employees as soon as needed, creating a secure environment for managing a globally mobile workforce.

What role does Airalo’s real-time analytics dashboard play in improving travel efficiency and sustainability?

Travel efficiency:

  • Optimized resource allocation: Businesses can monitor real-time data on eSIM purchases, usage, and popular destinations for their traveling workforce. eSIM analytics allows travel admins to allocate budget more efficiently by branch or department and pre-purchase or assign eSIMs for frequent routes.
  • Cost control & predictability: The dashboard offers detailed visibility into expenses, including total purchase value, assigned vs. purchased eSIMs, and benefits from discounted packages. This real-time tracking helps identify areas of overspending, allows for immediate budget adjustments, and facilitates accurate forecasting of future connectivity costs.
  • Streamlined operations: By understanding peak purchasing periods and usage trends, travel administrators can align their internal communication strategies to anticipate travel periods and let users know to use Airalo for Business.

Sustainability:

  • Reduced carbon footprint tracking: A key feature of the Airalo analytics dashboard is the “Carbon Footprint Reduction” metric. The ability to see the direct environmental impact of eSIM adoption can help companies integrate this into their broader sustainability reports and marketing efforts, appealing to environmentally conscious stakeholders and customers.

How do Airalo’s flexible eSIM package management tools support decentralized teams across different regions?

Airalo for Business allows companies to mimic their multi-layered organizational structure by setting up different branches or departments. For teams spread across various countries or regions, each local or regional manager can oversee their specific team’s connectivity needs without impacting the entire global account.

For decentralized workforces, teams can manage their own specific eSIM requirements, budgets, and users locally, promoting autonomy and responsiveness to regional travel patterns.

Companies that enable self-purchase empower employees in various regions to purchase eSIMs directly through the Airalo app, with the charges automatically billed to the organization’s central account. Even with self-purchase enabled, admins can still maintain control of budget limits and have complete visibility into purchases. This removes administrative bottlenecks and allows employees to react to immediate connectivity needs.

Employees have immediate access to connectivity without waiting for central approval or manual distribution, fostering self-sufficiency.

What future developments can we expect from Airalo Partners that will further shape the global travel connectivity landscape?

We’re committed to making eSIM connectivity more accessible, seamless, and scalable for businesses and partners worldwide. Two upcoming developments within Airalo for Business that will further shape the global travel connectivity landscape include:

  1. Subscription-based data for businesses: This will enable companies to provide uninterrupted connectivity to their frequently traveling employees through recurring data plans, removing the need for manual top-ups and ensuring consistent global access.
  2. Employee credit card management under business mode: Businesses will soon be able to empower their employees to use company cards when purchasing eSIMs. This ensures corporate discounts are automatically applied while providing full visibility into all transactions for streamlined expense tracking.

These innovations are part of our broader vision to simplify the way global travelers stay connected and to empower partners and enterprises to do the same at scale.

« Back to Page



स्रोत लिंक

स्रोत लिंक